During World War II Japanese Americans were the victims of words whose meanings were at variance with the phenomena they described (e.g., “evacuation,” “relocation,” “reception centers,” and “self-government”). Such euphemisms have continued to muddy the meaning of the World War II Japanese American experience, thus proving that words matter greatly. Japanese words also mattered a great deal after 1941. They were employed to good effect in the war against Japan and in the American Occupation of Japan, as Nikkei and non-Nikkei learned Japanese in military language schools. This panel of knowledgeable scholars, moderated by a Nikkei well regarded for precision of thought and language, consider these developments from an experiential, historical, and archival perspective.